Category: Uncategorized

weekend, take n

Wow, my last 20 or so entries have been almost entirely a recitation of recent personal events. Want to get into more interesting ponderances. Though I think this is a reflection of my recent life more than a trend unique to my livejournal. This one will be no exception. But soon, slowing my life down soon. (yeah right)

So, after the late night park picnic, I had phlebotomy training the following day. Mostly theory and a dry run (no stick). No uncapping of needles. It was good and important, but it built up alot of tension around the blood drawing process. There are important do’s and don’t’s involved, certainly. But I tend to have my emotions bouncing around on the inside, and that makes such processes all the more intense.

I got to research the history of phlebotomy (didn’t turn up much in 15 minutes, but hey, so it goes). After class was over, I deliberately stuck around to hang out with John, one of the longer running clinic people, and the trainer. We watched this show on PBS about the native american occupation of alcatraz. I thought it was pretty damn cool, though I was sad (if so very very far from surprised) about how the tale progressed. Afterwards I went home, fooled around for a bit.

pachooey & k8to, go & games

Tonight

Full of unexpectedness.

Went to see Noam Chomsky movie thing with . It was kinda lame & pretty expensive. The man has a gigantic cult surrounding him, and I honestly feel a combination of pity and envy towards him because of it. I think the views articulated in this little film are a fairly reasonable synthesis. The claim is that a major portion of US foreign policy is exercised through the military, and violent intervention. And that we really don’t have any moral high ground when it comes to terrorism. I generally agree with that.

He also makes the point that this general system of interaction has been going on far longer than the United States has existed. Powerful nations fuck around with less powerful nations all the time. There were certainly incidents of the same nature before Alexander the Great, but he’s not a bad early-western-history example. Again, I agree. <shrug>

There were alot of little points to it. Nothing terribly earthshattering in what he said. I don’t think I want to join the cult, but he makes some good points.

went home, and I started home too. Then I saw a used bookstore (on telegraph, whodathunk?) and went in, decided to check out the sci-fi section and hear familiar voices. Turns out Dave and Ian from the clinic are one isle over (just got out of bowling for collumbine). Much chatting ensues, Russell shows up. We wander over to the clinic, by way of the post office. Russell goes to a party. Dave, Ian, and I take a little trip to pack & save, followed by an after-official hours jaunt at the marina, where we have a little picnic on the rocks and talk about all sorts of stuff. It was cool, and random. I was really nervous about being there after the park was officially closed, but no ill came of it. I’m so boundary conscious.

Recent events

Free doctor for the warts gave me a prescription for (in essence) heavily dilute formaldahyde in an aqueous ointment to put on my lips. Uhhhh…. I’m not sure whether to not do it because of the toxic chemical angle or roll my eyes because of the homeopathy angle. Sweet heavens I need insurance. Liquid fucking nitrogen, people. Gimme a goddam cup of it, a q-tip, and a mirror. This is freaking annoying. It’s not rocket science, and I don’t want your snake oil.

And on the employment front… Half time job at berkeley (and half time means full benefits). I finally got called back about a resume drop, woohoo! Doesn’t look like bad work. PC tech monkey, minimal linux knowledge and a willingness to do trivial programming are all that it takes. Now I just have to find and assassinate the other 11 candidates mr hiring guy talked about.

Also, reserved a seat on a flight to pittsburgh for the holidays. Overall signed up for a longer trip than I’d originally planned on (late nov 25 – early dec 4). Going to visit parents for turkey day itself. Would love to see many friends while out there.

Um, whee.

missing the point

I borrowed a couple of compilations of transmetropolitan from Simon for my ride to Mountainview to visit . Good stuff, though I’m starting to get at least as interested in the personal story of spider jerusalem (main character of transmet for all y’all that ain’t read it yet 😉 more than the political scenery that he writes about. Spider is a journalist, and he specializes in inflammatory truth, in reporting the injustices of the world in as vulgar a fashion as possible. The world of transmetropolitan is probably at least as full of those injustices as our real world. He has a following. He needs the following, and hates it at the same time. He despises those who march in lockstep behind anyone, including himself. But he makes his living because people read his stuff. Anyway, as I was getting down off the top floor of the train, somebody on the opposite side not-quite-yelled at me “Spider Jerusalem Lives!”. I replied with “It’s a great comic.”

virtual v actual reality, trimming of the friends

Awhile ago I noticed that there weren’t as many livejournalers in some urban areas: the bay area, nyc, whatever. It’s probably not literally true, but I think that there’s a kernel of truth to it. The explanation that seemed pretty intuitive to me is that there are alot of people doing lj mostly as a social outlet, for a particular niche. And in these cities, you can get that face-to-face.

Of late, I’ve totally fallen behind on my lj subscriptions (“friends” list, if you must). I wish I could keep up with everyone, but I totally would not exchange that for what I’ve had in its place. 40-mile bike ride, party in the castro, crowd-surfing at the castro on halloween (glad I did it once. Never, ever again), checking out food not bombs, having a job, albeit half-time, that pays the bills. Game party at my place. A cause that I’ve committed to. Go. Munching at Herbivore. Reading “American Gods”. All good things. None involving a computer in the actual doing. (also some playing of wc3, but not amazing amounts).

But I still wanna keep up with people. So, I’m trimming off more bits of my friends list, adding a couple of people to give them permission, and putting like half of the people on my friends least out of my default view. Not because I don’t love you all, but because I like having a life.

my week in review.

Working full time temp job totally threw off my rhythyms. Even when I was unemployed, I developed a set of habits. Like freely pondering the important ideas (such as self-organizing entities) that wandered through my brain. And now that I have a (modestly unstructured) job, I’m falling in to new habits. Must steer clear of resentment of the job, which is, after all, paying my rent.

But this reading back 200+ posts every monday/tuesday to catch up from my weekend is really grinding. And pretty annoying at the second week in a row. Want to keep up with and maintain connections to the people I’ve put in my default view. Don’t have time to do that and live my own life. Hmm. Bleh.

Anyway, my weekend

cool work stuff